


Trust, but verify

by thedevilchicken



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Blood, M/M, Post-Canon, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 16:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20642336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Tonight, McCullum is asleep in Jonathan's bed.





	Trust, but verify

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).

Jonathan used to believe he had control of his life. He had a loving family and a career in which he took an almost passionate interest. He would like to believe he did good in the world and now he questions his humanity twice weekly. And Geoffrey McCullum is asleep in his bed. He understands that control is an illusion.

It's not a surprise that McCullum's in his bed because he left him sleeping there this morning, just before dawn, when he locked both doors to his room in the Pembroke. He was injured so it should have seemed perfectly natural for him to make his way to a doctor, but Jonathan knows he's not the only medical man of McCullum's immediate acquaintance. The ranks of the Guard of Priwen include field medics, after all, but lately McCullum has seemed reluctant to visit them. Jonathan wonders if he ever did before or if he's previously trusted his injuries to his own hands, and maybe to God's. 

For some time now, he's been trusting his injuries to Dr. Jonathan Reid of the Pembroke Hospital. Jonathan has colleagues who might believe they wield the power of life and death, but he's acutely aware that he is not God. He's not even a man. For a number of years, nearly seven of them, he's been an Ekon, and a vampire hunter should not be sleeping in his bed like some strange kind of full-grown Irish Goldilocks. Yet there he is, with a dressing at his shoulder through which a spot of blood is showing. Perhaps more than just a spot. Jonathan finds it quite difficult to tear his gaze away.

He first noted he was being followed perhaps some four or five months ago; he has to admit that the nights tend to blend together now that he can't see the days, and he neglected to mark the date, but he recalls the realisation: he could feel that he was being watched, like a prickle in his skin. And, as he made his night's rounds in Whitechapel dispensing medications his patients could ill afford, that feeling was frustratingly persistent. He was being watched. 

As the nights progressed, so the feeling intensified. He understood why: the perpetrator was becoming bolder, coming closer, almost close enough that Jonathan might see him with his strange vampiric enhancements of vision. He felt his heart pound as he hadn't in some time, since the Priwen had called their truce with him and the immediate Ekon threat had departed London. He kept a close eye, night by night. Until, one night, he could smell him. His blood, more precisely. It unsettled him to know he knew McCullum by the smell of what was pumping in his veins. 

Four or five months ago, Geoffrey McCullum followed him as he went about his business. Four or five months ago, he was waiting when Jonathan arrived back at the Pembroke around dawn. He was injured and Jonathan, ridiculously, offered his assistance; when he was done with the needle and thread, he licked his fingers clean of blood. McCullum winced, and called him disgusting, but he didn't tell him not to do it. Not the next time, but maybe the eighth time or the ninth, he let Jonathan lick the blood from his skin, too. He let him kiss it from his mouth. 

Now, four or five months later, here he is. He's sound asleep. 

He knows McCullum doesn't trust easily. As he watches him sleep, with that spot of blood staining the dressing at his injured shoulder, he understands what he's done to earn that trust. He has no more control over McCullum than he has over his life, but this he can control. 

He looks at him, longing, but he doesn't drink. And when McCullum wakes, he will trust him all the more for it. 

He sincerely hopes that trust is not misplaced.


End file.
